2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Dear Elaine,

I agree with you, but I think that the worst part of the story is that I never yet found (almost 300 or more report checked on my own) a GRI A+ (Higher application) sustainability report even when officially checked A+ by the GRI itself!

So if the GRI continue approve A+ Checked report but they are not, because they do not answer to all the relevant indicators (core) we will never have the Perfect Report!

Still in the last 5 years there has been a very big and valuable improvement by corporations in their ESG accountability and transparency that is worth to mention.

hi Anonymous, thanks for reading and commenting. The GRI check on reports is a representative sample check - they look at the index and a limited sample of the content to corroborate what is recorded in the Index. I agree that this leaves much scope for big gaps, which I have also noticed and find frustrating. I suppose it comes down to the question of how many resources the GRI should expend in policing reports versus driving to create a process in which the public disclosure of Companies is enough to lead to stricter adherence to the guidelines. The fact, as you say, that there has been improvement in quality and transparency might indicate that the system is, slowly but surely, working. I think it might be a good idea, where we see discrepancies, to feed these back to the GRI and to the Companies themselves. Whilst I do the latter quite a lot already, your point makes me think that I dont advise the GRI when I see an inadequate GRI Checked reports. Perhaps I should start to do this ?